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Virginia lawmaker: Cohen ‘not a heroic figure’ but has credibility

Posted at 8:05 PM, Jul 27, 2018
and last updated 2018-07-27 20:05:34-04

President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen is no hero, but he still has credibility, despite the President’s attempts to pin him as a liar, said a prominent Democratic congressman Friday.

“Cohen is not a, you know, a heroic figure, but he does have credibility,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Virginia, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on “The Situation Room.”

Connolly said that an audio recording obtained by CNN, which offered a glimpse at the confidential discussions between Cohen and Trump about buying rights to a Playboy model’s story about an alleged affair Trump had with her years earlier, “completely demolished Trump’s denial” of the affair and “hush payments.”

“We hear him actually saying on the tape, ‘Pay him in cash’ — the President of the United States. And so, I think Cohen has every reason at this point to actually be telling the truth,” Connolly said.

CNN reported earlier Friday that Cohen claims Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Trump denied that he knew about the meeting, tweeting on Friday: “I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr … Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?).”

After the tape regarding the Playboy model was publicized, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, called Cohen a “pathological liar.”

“I expected something like this from Cohen,” Giuliani told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday. “He’s been lying all week. He’s been lying for years.”

He later added, “I don’t see how he has any credibility.”